


Four times Erik was called dad and one time he was called husband

by listerinezero



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Domestic, Established Relationship, Fluff, Kid Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-05
Updated: 2011-11-05
Packaged: 2017-10-25 17:54:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/273107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/listerinezero/pseuds/listerinezero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik has better relationships with the kids than he thinks he does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Four times Erik was called dad and one time he was called husband

1.

“Dad! DAAAAAAD! Dad!”

The first time Erik heard Jean calling, he ignored it. He was thumbing through Charles’ files one room over, and the sound, the word, well, it didn’t even register with him.

“DAD! Dad…!”

But she kept calling out. And it so tugged at him that he couldn’t just sit back and let her wait for… well, Charles, he supposed. It must have been Charles she was calling out to.

“Dad, I need help!”

But Charles was down in the lab with Hank, and Jean knew that. He’d told her so himself, with a gentle squeeze to her arm and a peck on the forehead. 

Erik just had to be sure she was safe, that’s all, so he closed the files and went to check on Jean. She was only one room over, in the once-parlor/current-playroom/future-library, and when he walked in, Jean fixed him with a steady gaze and pouted, “Dad, I can’t reach it.”

No mistake there. She was talking to him.

“Daaaaad,” she whined again, though he barely heard it through the hum in his ears, barely saw her until he shook his world into focus again.

He said, “I’m sorry, darling. What is it?” Hearing himself use the word darling made him flinch. It’s not his word, it’s Charles’, and it doesn’t sound right coming from him. He’s trying too hard; he knows it, he hears it… He felt his ears start to burn. 

“I can’t reach my airplane.” She pointed and Erik followed her gaze up to the top shelf, where a paper airplane was wedged between Raven’s old piggy bank and a small wooden chest. “Can you get it down for me?”

Erik allowed himself a smile when he realized it wasn’t even anything metal. This wasn’t his job because of his powers; this was his job because he was her dad.

And how the hell was he going to get that thing down from there?

The old fashioned way: Erik dragged a chair over and climbed up, reached on his toes, and knocked the airplane from its perch. It looped down to the ground and landed in a nosedive. Clearly an inferior design.

“How did you even get that up there? Did you see how it looped?” Jean shrugged. “Just a minute,” he told her, and left the room. He came back with a stack of some of Charles’ old papers and said, “I’ll show you how to make a really good airplane.”

At that, Jean's eyes lit up and she followed him over to the sofa, where they sat together, folding and creasing and flying planes, and whatever Erik was doing before, well, it just wasn’t important anymore.

“Dad, look at this one!” Jean burst, and tossed a plane into the air.

“Wow! Well done, sweetheart. That was a good one,” he heard himself say, and this time he didn’t flinch.

 

2.

A knock on the door in the middle of the night is not a good thing. Never a good thing. And even if Charles physically could jump out of bed and run to the door, those tentative knocks wouldn’t wake him up anyway. It was like sleeping with a very loud log. On the other hand, Erik always slept as if he was waiting for a signal, even after a day of rigorous training, even with a warm, snoring log wrapped in his arms.

The kids knew it, too, because the second knock came with a fervent whisper of, “Erik? Erik!”

Erik lurched out of bed with a groan, threw on a robe, and shuffled over to the door. He made no effort to suppress the murderous glare he knew was surely overtaking his face, and when he stepped out into the hallway, the kids jumped back three feet. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. He crossed his arms over his chest and glared at them.

Then Alex hiccupped.

“Can you come down to the lab?” Raven slurred. “I think we. Beast. He drank too much. It was our fault though because we. He never. Would.”

Erik rolled his eyes and groaned, “Oh, for Christ sake, what, did you get into the liquor cabinet? Seriously? How old are you? What, are you, like, stealing dad’s liquor?”

“Well, but. You’re the cool dad,” Alex said, and they all snickered. Erik shook his head and marched them down to the lab where they found Hank slumped in a corner, still in his white coat, glasses askew, smelling distinctly like vomit.

They mumbled apologies and excuses and “he said he never drank before” and “how were we supposed to know he’d be such a lightweight” while Erik cleaned Hank up, made sure he was still alive, and got him into bed.

“And as for the rest of you,” Erik growled at them with Hank’s bedroom door shut behind him, “go to bed. Now. We’ll discuss this tomorrow.”

They looked forlorn and shuffled off to their rooms. Except for Raven, who turned back and asked, “Erik? Are you going to tell Charles about this?”

“Not if I don’t have to,” he said, and Raven gave him a sloppy, sloshed, grateful smile.

When Erik finally climbed back into bed, Charles stirred and mumbled, “Where did you go?”

“Kids needed me. They’re fine. Don’t worry about it.”

“Needed you? What about me?”

“I’m the cool dad,” Erik smirked, and snuggled back down into bed.

 

3.

They’re up on the roof. Charles and Hank are on the ground below signaling to them. A little to the left. A little to the right. They’re supposed to be setting up some contraption that should amplify the signal for Cerebro… or the television. Sean wasn’t really paying attention to all the details. He leans over the edge to get a good look and—

“GAH!” 

Erik grabs his shoulders and gives him a jolt, like he’s going to throw him off the roof. The scream Sean lets out is embarrassing, especially considering what a real scream from him can sound like.

Erik is laughing. “Come on, I was only kidding.”

“Yeah, well, you weren’t kidding when you pushed me off a satellite dish.”

“You deserved that. You don’t interrupt Charles and me without knocking anymore, do you?”

“No, I don’t really need to see my dad giving a blowjob again,” he mumbles, then quickly adds “Or receiving one.”

Erik gives him a wicked smile.

 

4.

Erik was still panting. He never thought he’d miss the cool air, and certainly not this early in the summer. It was only June, and early June at that, but the water in his glass could not be cold enough. He could feel each drop of sweat as it moved along his spine. His legs were still vibrating from the run.

Panting. Still panting.

He put his glass under the tap again and filled it with another glass of cold water. He was contemplating pouring it over his head when Raven walked into the kitchen.

“There you are!” She beamed at him. “I’ve been looking for you.”

“Oh yeah?” he sounded gruffer than he meant to. Probably from the run.

“I have a little something for you,” she said, and handed him a wrapped present.

Erik could not have been more surprised. “For me?” he asked. “What for?”

Raven blushed a little bit. “It’s Father’s Day.” At that he looked up from the package and gaped at her: mouth open, eyes wide, eyebrows somewhere near his hairline. “I know you’re not my dad. And I mean, you’re basically married to my brother, so really you’re more like my brother-in-law than my dad, but, so, who cares?” Erik stuttered a bit, too overwhelmed and surprised to know quite what to say. It made Raven smile. “You’ve been a really good father to all of us, whether you meant to be one or not, so. I just wanted to say thank you.”

At that, Erik’s heart finally slowed down and his breath finally flowed out his nose – he hadn’t realized he’d been holding it in. His mouth pricked up into a small, bashful, warm smile. “Thank you,” he said, and wrapped her into a hug.

When they parted, he opened the present. It was a pocket book of chess strategies. Actually, it was “ERIK’S Pocket Book of Chess Strategies,” his name scrawled across the cover. Erik chuckled and flashed her a questioning smirk, to which she responded:

“Charles needs his ass kicked.”

 

5.

They started bringing younger and younger mutants into the house. Charles couldn’t bear to hear children’s screams when hooked into Cerebro, so when he caught flashes of young mutants being abused, everything stopped until he was sure that child was safe, even if that meant wrapping them up in a blanket and smuggling them back to the mansion. Erik couldn’t stop him bringing more children in even if he wanted to. No child should feel even a fraction of the pain he’d endured in his younger years, and Erik felt that since they had the space and the resources to care for them, then they would be monsters not to.

If they still were recruiting trips, Erik would be at Charles’ side in an instant. However, Charles’ Cerebro-directed travels were starting to look less like recruiting missions and more like visits from Child Protective Services. Charles had more success without Erik, anyway. People were more trusting of the doe-eyed man in the wheelchair than the stern-looking man whose glare made the china rattle. Erik couldn’t stomach it. He admired Charles’ resolve and his ability to remain calm and steady, even when face to face with parents who kept their mutant children locked in closets or worse. Bad things tended to happen when Erik came along for these trips, and as a result, Charles banned him from joining in the recruitment of any mutant under the age of fifteen.

So Charles would disappear for a day or two and leave Erik in charge. And Erik in charge usually meant that someone got fired. Every time, without fail, Erik would fly into a temper, ranting that these kids wouldn’t learn anything if they were being spoiled rotten. He fired a maid because one of the boys refused to clean his room. He fired one of the teachers because she offered to sew a button back onto one of the girls’ sweaters. “They need to be able to fend for themselves! Do you think I don’t know how to mend my own things? How can we be preparing them for the cruelties they'll face in this world if we treat them like princesses?”

This time Erik fired their cook, and it didn’t take him long to realize he’d made a huge mistake. It was the way the children hovered around the kitchen asking for sandwiches and ice cream and cookies. “When I was your age, do you know what I had to eat?” Erik heard himself say, and he knew he sounded ridiculous and cliché, but he was too annoyed to care. So he fired their cook and told the kids that if they wanted a peanut butter sandwich, they’d have to make it themselves.

They didn’t, though. Of course they didn’t! All they made was a mess. Cereal everywhere, globs of peanut butter on the floor, drips of milk across the kitchen: it all made Erik want to rip his hair out. Instead, he yelled, “Out! Everyone out! Now! I’m making dinner, and you’re going to eat whatever I make, and if I hear one complaint, no one’s eating dinner the rest of the week, you got me?”

So when Charles wheeled in to the kitchen, Erik was peeling potatoes and muttering under his breath. Charles barely held in a smile.

Erik asked him, “Any luck?”

“Yes, actually. The little boy had an aunt. He’ll be living with her for now, but I will continue to check in on him.” Charles looked pointedly at the potato peeler. “You could do that with your mind, of course. Might be a good exercise in fine movements.”

“I prefer to do this by hand. I find it relaxing,” he grunted, and Charles chuckled at the irony.

“Would you like me to hire her back? I’m sure she’ll understand.”

“Yes, please. I hate cooking.” Erik smirked. “I don’t know why you keep me around, Xavier. I’m a terrible wife.”

“True, but you’re a wonderful husband.”

Erik paused to take in the warmth Charles was emanating towards him.

“If you’d like, we can get take out,” Charles offered, and Erik accepted.


End file.
